Wasteball: Play, collaboration, and experimental heritage in the MAPPA Lab.

Wasteball is an experimental game created within the MAPPA Lab at the University of Pisa. Played daily after the laboratory’s communal lunch, it involves all members (professors, postdoctoral researchers, PhD candidates, students, and interns) regardless of role, background, or gender. With simple rules and an informal setting, the game nonetheless fulfils a profoundly pedagogical role. Wasteball was conceived as a form of academic team-building: a ritual of play that transforms the laboratory into a collaborative and inclusive environment. By suspending hierarchies, it fosters inclusion, trust, and a shared sense of belonging, thereby shaping the social conditions under which scientific knowledge is produced. At the same time, Wasteball can be read as a piece of ar chaeogaming and experimental heritage, in which play becomes a medium for reflexive data-making and for rethinking the ethics of cooperation in research. This paper situates Wasteball within the theoretical frameworks of archaeogaming, game-based pedagogy, and the anthropology of institutions, arguing that play can serve as a method for cultivating cooper ative and situated epistemic communities and sustaining collective care in academia.